Sartor

  She selected a good long, well-made blade, suited to a tall person, and carried it with both hands downstairs. The sight of the sword acted strangely upon the crowd—they backed away as if she held it threateningly. That was interesting. She would have to think about why, but later, because she found Mendaen silently helping Rel shrug into a sling. Mendaen looked as upset as she felt.

  When Rel saw Atan, a flush of happiness warmed him, but with it came an intense awareness of the curious faces crowding in around them. His emotions were very like hers, though neither of them had the experience to observe it.

  Atan fumbled for the right words, her face bright red. She remembered Tsauderei saying once, after they had talked over a record about the Dei family, If and when you find yourself the center of attention—and you will, if you are successful, you won’t be able to help that, being who you are—never say too much.

  Gehlei had said, When in doubt, good manners always work.

  She said in what she hoped was a formal tone, “You cannot leave without at least a trifling token of my... of Sartor’s... gratitude for your help.” She held out the sword, with its swept hilt, fine but not too fine, a blade both practical yet made by an artist—balanced yet it looked like something that would benefit a large man. “Here. And thank you.”

  She could see that the formal tone was not right, but what was right? His expression had gone stony, making it impossible to know what he was thinking, and she found herself burbling on. “Please know that you are forever welcome to come to Sartor and find friendship waiting. And I would so like to hear about your travels, as it doesn’t seem that I’m going to be doing much traveling.”

  Rel’s left hand gripped the hilt, his face the deep red of mixed embarrassment and pleasure. Intensely self-conscious, he mumbled in Mearsiean, “I thank you—”

  Atan said, meaning to be encouraging, “Daelender? A fine new name for the blade.”

  Rel was taken by surprise. Where he came from, nobody named weapons, and the words she thought a name meant thank you in Mearsiean. But she looked so pleased, her head tilted at a wistful angle, and anyway there was no chance of speaking because Mendaen and Sin and Hin and their companions sent up a great cheer, echoed by the people crowding in to see what was happening.

  I’ve got to get away and think things through, he decided, as Atan forced a smile that felt as false as her attempt at formality. She wondered how she could possibly say farewell without sounding silly, when she became aware that the cheer had not ended—that in fact the noise outside was not a cheer, but shouting.

  Was that a scream?

  Atan whirled around, to discover Irza back at last. She wore a fine gown with a costly brocade over robe in the old style.

  Irza stared at Atan with a mixture of urgency and a barely-acknowledged resentment. She and Arlas had arrived at their home to find it undisturbed, except for hastily set-aside things and a burned cake left in the now-cold oven. Arlas had run up to her room, found all her old toys, and sat down and cried. Irza had wandered from room to room, lighting all the lamps and candles when the sun vanished, though she did not know why.

  Late at night there came a noise below and the girls had crouched in fear on the landing, regretting the lights until they saw servants enter, bearing bulky receptacles, following which their mother strode in, looking around with a frown.

  Her face had changed to relief and a smile when she looked up and spied the two faces on the landing, but that after that bright moment, everything after felt like the descent of the sun.

  Mother had called them into her formal receiving room, and required them to recount everything. She had stopped them frequently to correct pronunciation—You have picked up some disgustingly low idiom and enunciation. That will change at once—and to ask questions—Who is this Savar? He’s gone? What was his title?—after which Arlas had asked, “What happened to you, Mother?”

  “Never mind that. The past is past, and we survived, the three of us. We must not betray the memories of House Ianth by letting sentiment get in the way of service. This young queen owes you a great deal, enough I should think to gain us Second Circle or higher. You will help her understand this by reclaiming the Dei brat. With her turned out properly, when Yustnesveas Landis summons her first Star Chamber, you can claim guardianship of Julian Dei...”

  Julian had refused to come to Irza, even though she’d scolded and, in fear of her mother, begged. No one at that pleasure house listened to Irza’s commands to hand her over. Nobody paid Irza any attention, except to say, “The child may stay as long as she wishes.”

  Irza had walked out and found...

  “There is a mob about to execute someone,” she said to Atan. “They will not listen to me—”

  Atan pushed past and ran down the steps.

  Irza led the way past the orderly line (everyone turning heads to stare at Atan as she dashed by) to the other end of the square, through an arch and into a smaller square, outside the old palace guard enclosure, which the Norsundrians had taken over. This was where Hinder and Lilah had been so briefly imprisoned.

  As the two girls arrived, several people tried to drag a struggling woman toward a wall, where two men and a woman stood with bows in hand, arrows nocked.

  “What are you doing here?” Atan yelled, but no one heard her above the screams of the woman and the angry shouting of the crowd.

  Fury gave her energy. She murmured the spell, aimed the ring she still wore up toward the sky, and the courtyard lit with a flash of light painful to the eyes.

  Silence.

  Atan turned to the leader of the mob, a stout man with a thick beard. “I am Yustnesveas Landis. What are you doing?”

  “I’ve had Candal Mityan in my cellar since your father died, princess,” the man said. “We in the House Guild—”

  “That’s inns, eateries, and pleasure houses,” the thin woman with the bow pointed out in a self-important tone.

  The man sent her a look. “We swore to close down when the city was taken. But Candal Mityan broke that ban. We burned her house just before they put the binding spell on us, when we found out she’d been collaborating with those Norsundrian soul-suckers, excuse my language—”

  An old woman shrieked, “She took booty as payment! Booty they looted from the dead here in the city!”

  “Entertained them!” yelled a burly man with bright red hair. One of his huge hands held the struggling woman by the arm. “We swore she’d die first thing we got peace, and so we mean to keep that promise!” He shook the accused woman as he spoke.

  “Then we haven’t peace,” Atan said.

  “What?” The thin woman gawked.

  The bearded man flushed. “We’re keeping the new peace by executing a traitor.”

  “Not true,” the bound woman said hoarsely.

  The red-haired man let go and she dropped to the ground, where she struggled to rise. It was difficult, due to her bound hands.

  “Cut her free,” Atan said.

  No one moved.

  Anger flashed through Atan, so hot and bright it made her prickle all over. “Fine, then I will do it myself, but if anyone moves before she has a chance to speak for herself, then... then I’m going to go back to Sarendan, and you can fight among yourselves for another hundred years, and save Norsunder the trouble of destroying Sartor for good.”

  Hinder glided round one of the adults. He pulled a stone knife from a hidden pocket in his tunic and silently cut the woman’s bindings as she sobbed. “Princess,” she said, making a visible effort. “I am no traitor. I did take them in. Entertain them. The stone-backs killed my daughter the first night. She was a guard at the palace. They were taking what they wanted anyway, all my drink and food. I—I thought to turn on them, but not by fighting, but by my arts. And so I got them drunk, and talking, and bragging, and every word they said I passed on to my brother, also in the guard.”

  Hannla appeared at Atan’s elbow, her aunt beside her. The older women looked grim, and H
annla afraid, her eyes huge.

  Then an old man at the back muttered, “And made yourself rich doing it?”

  “Where’s this brother?” someone asked.

  “She had a brother in the guard, right enough,” the thin woman with the bow admitted in a grudging voice, her gaze down. “Might be dead, though.”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t come by, so far.” Candal Mityan lifted her chin. “What would he have to come to? If Garrod Thesvar there hadn’t caused my house to burn, you would have found every single thing I took in payment down in my cellar, waiting to go back to its owners. I never took one silver of blood money, not one. Go look in my cellar. See if you don’t find melted metals, silver and even a little gold, for they never paid much. Mostly they just took.”

  Atan had been thinking rapidly.

  So far she had listened to people, and the decisions, the orders, had been easy. Settle the wounded in this room. Send guild problems to the guild houses. Find out who is willing to serve food, and we’ll pay later.

  Now she had to take command in the sense of passing judgment. She had the title. The question was, whether or not the title and the look of a Landis were enough to mantle her with authority.

  She lifted her voice. “Everybody here has discovered that some family members aren’t going to come wandering back. And another thing I’ve learned as I listen to people is that we all know people who ought to be honored.”

  Except for a stirring and a few whispers, no one spoke.

  Atan turned in a circle, meeting as many gazes as would meet hers. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears as she declared, “At sunset we will make the mourning circle through the boundaries of the old city, as we have done ever since Sartor was first established. Then everyone will go home and begin to rebuild their lives. Everyone.”

  A hundred people began to remonstrate, but she held up her hand.

  “Tomorrow, on the third day, as is proper, I will summon a convocation of the Star Chamber. And we’ll meet every day, as long as there’s need. Anyone who wishes justice, speak to your guild chief or to your governor. Everyone can speak, and everyone will be heard after we make our vows, me to you, and you to me. There is to be no taking of lives, or we may as well hand the kingdom right back to Detlev.”

  Another silence met this pronouncement, but Atan, so used to watching others for tiny clues to what they thought, saw in exchanged looks and loosened hands, and shuffled feet that though no one was particularly happy, again they were willing to have a kind of order imposed. They knew what to expect.

  “So go eat dinner. Find your families. And your white robes for mourning.”

  The crowd dispersed. Hannla’s aunt led the accused woman off to the wounded wing.

  Atan ignored her quaking insides, her watery knees and dry mouth, and tried to remember what she had been doing—

  “Rel is gone,” Lilah said, appearing at her side. “And Irza was trying to make Julian go with her. That’s why they’re here.” She tipped her head toward Hannla, who stood nearby, looking a little lost.

  Atan swallowed painfully, aware of the sharp knife of disappointment. Rel’s only doing what he said he would. She did not have so many friends that she could bear to lose one. This pain was worse, however, the opposite of feelings she was beginning to acknowledge. Though Lilah had been her first friend, and Hinder her favorite of the Shendoral group, it was Rel she kept thinking about most, whose conversation she remembered most.

  As Atan walked slowly back to the great square and the palace entrance, she remembered what Lilah had said about her mother’s diary, and the behavior of adults in love. They think about nothing else. It turns them stupid.

  Atan wasn’t full grown yet, but she knew it would happen in the next year, unless she cast that spell to delay it. She had not crossed the physical threshold between child and adult, and yet, when she thought about Rel, it was like the days when she used to fly high to the border of Sartor early on summer mornings. There she would hover and watch the sun come up, shafting golden light upon the ranks and ranks of mountains.

  Before the sun actually appeared, she could feel the nascent warmth as well as see the first glimmerings of light lifting the darkness. Then the sun would come, blinding if she looked straight at it, warm and then hot on her skin.

  Is that was adulthood felt like?

  Now all the poems and songs made sense. That is, she’d always known what the words meant, but they’d seemed either silly or decorative. She hadn’t guessed at the depth of pain when love was not returned for whatever reason. She could imagine the brilliance of that internal sun rising, if it was. That dazzle was for those who had the time for it.

  And I don’t.

  She excused herself from Lilah, pushed past the others without hearing them, and went to retrieve her pack. As soon as she found a corner without people, she stopped and held her breath, her eyes squeezed shut. It hurt so much to think of Rel gone. How much worse could it get? Again she remembered Lilah’s mother and the snow bank. It might seem romantic to those who had time for love, but to anyone else it was as Lilah had said, selfish. I can’t let it get worse, she thought desolately. I can’t afford it now.

  If she used that spell to retard physical maturity, she could leave it that way for, say, a year, while she settled Sartor. If Rel didn’t come back, then the feelings would go away, right?

  With shaking fingers, she took out that spell. Her eyes blurred with tears and she couldn’t see the paper, but she scrubbed her sleeve fiercely across her face until her sight was clear. And she performed the spell.

  Nothing felt different. The thought of Rel walking away toward the border hurt exactly the same.

  But it will go away, she thought, and made herself walk downstairs to where she knew people were waiting for her.

  o0o

  Unknown to either, Rel’s thoughts paralleled Atan’s as he passed the old north gate and headed up the road away from Eidervaen. He’d never felt those feelings before. He knew what they were, and where they might lead once he released the youth spell. After I find my father, that’s what he’d told himself when he first got the spell done on him to slow the approach of adulthood.

  Now he was glad of the spell. These feelings were intense enough. He didn’t want them—not for Atan, no, give her the full name, Queen Yustnesveas Landis, the only living representative of the oldest kingdom in the world. All those friendly faces—Irza at the head of them, all the rest of her nobles—would sour if they thought that Rel the Traveler had pretensions.

  Someday Atan might choose to marry, at which time she would be courted by every prince in the world. That was the way things worked.

  So he’d better get on with his life, be glad he was able to help, and busy himself somewhere else in the world.

  o0o

  When the sun crowned the highest peak in the northeast, the streets were full of people of all ages, dressed in white, or as near as they could get to white, each bearing a candle.

  They converged on the remains of the ancient city wall, called Grand Chandos Way, though it actually comprised a great circle. On two sides it bordered the northern and middle branches of the river, the waters of which threw back reflections of liquid light as people slowly circled behind the old tower, along the north side of the palace, and through the exclusive shop area called Aliana Circle, though it had not been a circle for centuries.

  Atan peered into the faces she passed along the way, knowing that their grief was new and raw. Her vision blurred. The older folks stopped to sing ancient songs at each of the twelve stations, which were ancient symbols for the Twelve Blessings. Some of the buildings were empty and others nearly destroyed. People struggled to join the memories of a century ago with the present time.

  When Atan reached the grand doors of the palace, called the dragon gateway, opposite the tower, she spotted a small blue figure gazing up at the gleaming carvings that were still grand, though smoke-blackened.

  “Merewen?”
br />   Atan stopped. Those following her wavered, whispers muting into a susurrus.

  “Who is that?”

  “She’s blue!”

  Merewen skipped lightly down the steps, blue eyes wide, hair floating behind her. She was very much alive, and Atan smiled mistily as Merewen exclaimed, “I found my people at last!”

  “Yay!” Lilah yelled, as Atan exclaimed, “Come. Join us on the mourning walk, and tell me everything.”

  Merewen skipped. “How pretty the candles look, like a river of light. As for me, I don’t have words. Yet.”

  “What happened on the tower?” Atan asked, glancing over her shoulder at the tower, gleaming in the moonlight.

  Merewen shivered. “I was so afraid, but the blue people were around me, and when that horrid thing came at me out of the air, they pushed, and I, um, learned how to unbody—no, that sounds silly. How to not be human, and be a Loi instead.”

  “Oh,” Lilah let out a long breath. “Is it as wonderful as the caves?”

  “Different,” Merewen said. “Words don’t work. And time is different. I thought I was gone a little bit, but I wanted to come and tell you that the Loi said that now I know how to go back and forth, I can be your Aroel.”

  “Good,” Atan said happily. “So the Loi are formless?”

  “No. Yes. I will explain when I understand better.”

  Merewen shivered. “This I can tell you. Savar was killed by some Norsundrian magician. Vashee—Vorshee—Vatiora. That’s it. Not that Dejain, the pretty one who was doing all the magic against us. An even worse one, they said. “

  “I feared so,” Atan said, and added firmly, “When a new building is built, it’s going to be named for him. That I promise.”

  Merewen smiled mistily. “That makes me happy in the middle of my sad.”

  o0o

  The mourning circle was done.

  The aristocrats were the first to peel off and resume the excavation of their stately homes along Parleas Terrace.

  Arlas skipped along, happy to still be alive, for she was not the target of her mother’s low, irritated voice. “You could not reclaim the child, I comprehend. Those pleasure house people are, of course, out for whatever they can get. I will take my place tomorrow at the convening of Star Chamber, but only long enough to make my vows and demonstrate that Ianth House is alive. We will not waste our time with the rabble that will no doubt line up to make demands that that child cannot yet give. She has an empty treasury, unless there are outland holdings, and it will take months to sort that out. But there is always spring.”